The Rantings of a Raiding Night Elf Druid Restokin
These are all my thoughts and opinions, and as a result are subject to fallibility and insolence.

Friday, May 15, 2009

History of Fenrous

The history of Fenrous is a curious thing. Fenrous started out on Azgalor as a Night Elf Druid to be played on the server that one of my wife's co-workers had a character on. Azmodious. It is from this humble beginnings that Fenrous' journey started in the World of Warcraft PVP; however, that is not the exact beginning of the story of Fenrous. No, that begun many years before, many, many a nights of saying, "Five more minutes then I am done honey."

You see, there is the Druid named Cebon Gladerunner on Erollisi Marr of The Raenore, which is where the story actually starts. For a long period of time, I played EverQuest and was the guild leader for The Raenore for nearly a year during this time; however, I found that guild life in EverQuest was limited. Belonging to a social networked group of friends whom disapproved of me leaving thier non-guilded social group for a guild of like minded individuals, whom grouping was a regular occurance; however, the grouping system for mobs was terrible in EverQuest, but I loved the niche that druids provided the game.

So, I was always loving the Warcraft games, and I signed up for Beta testing. Luckily I got in during the 'Open Alpha' period. I was immediately hooked and decided that I would be migrating from EQ to WoW quietly and discreately. The first night of alpha, I played until I was a Level 12 Druid. I died doing the bear quest nearly 8 times. Now that was back in the day where the first 5 levels took a LONG time, especially when you spent more time reading quests, saying these yellow question marks are awesome, and just looking around the enviroment. Also, I couldn't believe my luck in the death penalty system, NO DEBIT. NO LOSSING LEVELS, just a durability cost, SIGN ME UP. So I ordered my Collector's Edition World of Warcraft and was

on my way to enjoying myself, or so I thought.

One of the basic mistakes that I made in EverQuest, very early on, was turning in the Book of Discordia, and becoming flagged, PERMANETLY for PVP. Which at level 1, meant that you died ALOT to people whom just wanted to be mean because your noobsauce, even at the time a toon 5 levels higher, because I got on the EQ bandwagon when it came out, could EASILY kill you. So, I selected a non-PVP realm, Role Play, perfect for me, or so I thought and off I went to Earthen Ring. Cebon had been reborn as a Night Elf Druid. I had given up porting people and making food, for being able to have no death debit. I was enjoying myself. Then the envitable happened, as a casual gamer, there is only so far you can go in the game, so by the time Cebon was mid-40s, I had already become overly bored with the game, but still logged on occasionally, to work a couple of quests down a night. Hey, I was doing more quests in WoW then I ever could even find in EQ, and I wasn't having to monster grind to get up in levels.

All is well, and I am leveling, then one day my, then wife at the time, comes home and sayes that I needed to talk to this guy at her work about World of Warcaft, because he also played. Turns out that during this conversation, everything that had started to disappointment in WoW could be fixed. And trust me, not having any friends playing or knowing

anyone else playing has a HUGE impact on your enjoyment of WoW. So, I decided that I would join Azgalor, playing anything that I wanted, as long as it was Alliance, and Azmodious would help me out doing quests. At the time, Azmodious was a Level 35 Night Elf Hunter.

Now, you have to understand that I was pretty unhappy with EverQuest, unhappy with Earthen Ring, and didn't really want to start from scratch, but knew that if I went to play with Azmodious, that I would probably not play after a few months of reaching level 60. So, off I was to try something new, thus the Night Elf Druid Fenrous was borne. At this point in time, around Mayish 2004, there were only a few new instances being added to the game, with Dire Maul having recently come online.

Thus, the Legacy started on Azgalor. Orignially, I decided that I would create a guild named Ordo Lupus and convince Azmodious to join, which I did successfully do; however, my absence in EverQuest, and all the rest of the online games did not go unnoticed. Unfortunately, that is again when issues would arise. See, the social gaming group found out that I was playing World of Warcraft, and between them complaining about the class abilities and me playing Alliance, we lived for a few months with utter turmoil, as myself and Azmodious were doing more and more redicoulus things, like trying to kill the Dragons at the entrance to Caverns of Time. And we did get the first two dragons down as a level 45 Hunter and level 32 Druid. Eventually, the guys either stoped complaining or were playing Horde more than they were playing Allaince. I have to say, the series of events that happened next for the most part are thier faults.

So, the leveling began, Azmodious and myself having reached level 60 at nearly the same day,

assisted and ran quests with the other Ordo's members hoping that we could get onto better content. During this time as Ordo Lupus' Guild Leader, we grew out to 25 active members, 15 inactive or very casual players, published 3 web comics, and I worked on my gear. The battlegrounds were just beginning and was a good time sync when other people were not on or doing things with guildies.

Azmodious and I wanted to raid. We wanted to hit end game content. End Game at this time was still, Dire Maul, but they had added two new big time upgrades to the game, the dungeon instances which contained Tier 1 sets and Zul Grub. Now, understand that originally T1 is now what is considered T0 sets. So if you wanted to progress, you needed at least 10 to do most of the dungeons, had to have a set of T0 gear, and be getting upgrades out of Zul Grub. We couldn't get our Retribution pallys to accept the fact that they either needed to Tank or Heal, that anyone Retribution spec'ed in a raid was gimping the raid. It is also at this time that we realized that we had to get our gear and they were not going to group with people that were not guildies; however, they were also against adding people whom they didn't know personally to the guild. So, very quickly we were already gimped by my members. Eventually, I had my Wildheart set all 8 pieces, and they had nothing, having just done quests for gear and buying items off the auction house.

Enter, The Children of the Grave. So one day Azmodious sends me a tell telling me to drop guild and come with a group to Zul Grub. I was excited to say the least; however, I wasn't happy with dropping guild, but they let me come along in one of their PUG spots because I was restoration spec'd. Yes, these are the days before Tree Druids, before Moonkins, and before druids did anything other than HEAL in raids. This is also the time of AQ's world events prior to the opening of the portal. So, off I went with 20 people I barely knew to heal the tanks. At this point I was hooked on end content raiding. So much so that by the time Children of the Grave started to fall apart, I joined another raiding guild which was doing Molten Core and Blackwing Layer raids every week, Retribution. It was a great time for me, healing and then working on gear in dungeons. Faction work as another priority and was REALLY painful in those days, where only by turning in stones did I get to Revered with Argent Dawn. But, I was working on Tier sets, and had my want lists, and pretty much had everything macro'ed out that I was never turned down for a raid spot, and eventually became Class leads and Healer leads.

By now its Thanksgiving 2005, I had decided to go to my brother's house that year. While the kids and everyone did activities downstairs, I was feverishly playing away upstairs grinding out Argent Dawn faction and doing any pickup raids I could since about this time all of the active Retribution guild runs had begun to wind down and the guild leadership was talking about scraping the guild into a 10 man raiding guild for Burning Crusade. My brother decided that he

was tired of playing EverQuest ina two box scenario because there was no-one to play with and joined me on Azgalor playing a gnome warlock. After a couple of weeks worth of play, he made 26, we decided that we would attempt to roll Horde and join the other gaming group; however, they were playing on Bonechewer and my Horde toon, albiet low level, was on Laughing Skull. So we sat down and mapped out a new guild on Emerald Dream called Sanguineous Dragons. It was at this point, I decided that if I couldn't play Fenrous, I didnt want to play a Druid. So the Blood Elf Mage Cywyn was crafted. I wish I could say everything was well, but it wasn't. I think looking back now, we overlooked one core design flaw when we mapped out the guild, THEY were not playing as much as we were lead to believe. So we attempted to get raiding going,

which failed. We attempted to get a Core Dungeon group going so we could do faction grinding, which meet with some success, as in my

factions are maxed, but ultimately resulted more from finding pugers than anything else. Then I tried to find a couple of raid groups on Emerald

Dream. The one I ended up getting a chance in the very first run resulted in me rolling against people whom had already won 2 items, and end result was 2 spell dps casters getting 4 items

each, while I got nothing. Then was told when asked about my disappointment, that is the way it rolls.

So, here is Azmodious telling me, dude, come back to what you love. Come back to your Druid on Azgalor. So I informed my brother of my decision and rolled back to playing Fenrous. Now I am in a good guild, with Azmodious and my brother Draklite. The guys that play at work are all in the guild as well, and from here is where my journey back into raid healing has begun.